HP board shakeup and chairman exit gives CEO Meg Whitman a chance to shake off troubles.

BP faults Deepwater Horizon claims overseer, launches first brand-wide fuel loyalty program.

BMW prepares X4 crossover for U.S. market, makes vehicles greener with fewer cylinders, less gasoline.

Al Jazeera America hires CNN's Ali Velshi as anchor.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos leads $5 million investment round in Henry Blodget's Business Insider.

Apple reportedly signs music labels for streaming service as Google's YouTube clinches deal with Universal Music.

Best Buy may have turned the tide on showrooming Amazon.Continue reading...

Blockbuster U.K. is rising from the ashes after plunging into administration—a form of bankruptcy in Britain—in January when accountancy firm Deloitte assumed day-to-day operations while looking for a buyer.

"We are working closely with suppliers and employees to ensure the business has the best possible platform to secure a sale, preserve jobs and generate as much value as possible for all creditors," said Lee Manning, joint administrator and partner in Deloitte’s restructuring services at the time. 

The pioneering DVD and video rental company that entered the U.K. market in 1989 is struggling to survive in a burgeoning and highly competitive world where digital real estate trumps physical and streaming is de rigueur. Since January, a number of the brand's 528 stores have been bought up by Morrison's supermarket, and now, Gordon Brothers, a private equity group, has stepped in to buy 264 stores for an unspecified amount, subsequently saving nearly 2,000 jobs.Continue reading...

Alibaba names next CEO.

Denny's cancels franchise deal in China.

Google shows off sample apps for Project Glass a SXSW.

American Airlines and U.S. Airways prepare for merger bumps.

Apple and Samsung values soar.

Barney's New York rebrands Co-op stores as regular Barney's.

BlackBerry stock jumps on Lenovo takeover interest rumor.

BMW to build sub-brand for China.

Boeing sees investigators focus narrowly on batteries in Dreamliner probe.

China's Spring Airlines adds cars to in-flight sales offering.Continue reading...

UK retailers are not having an easy time of it, as the systematic shuttering of 164 Blockbuster stores is added to the list of foundering UK businesess.

The high-profile failing of music retailer HMV—which operates some 240 stores in Britain, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong—has already shut down all 16 of its Irish posts. The chain's owner, Hilco Consumer Capital, which specializes in buying bankrupt brands and owns Borders and Polaroid, is expected to decide the fate of HMV's other stores sometime this month. HMV's woes came on the heels of the bankruptcy of Jessops, a UK camera retailer, last week.

For Blockbuster, whose U.S. retail arm has been belly-up since 2010, the closure of UK stores comes as no surprise.Continue reading...

Recent social media blunders by two major brands contain lessons for others in how not to behave online, experts say. Take these two rather dramatic examples:

In St. Louis, an Applebee’s waitress loses her job for a post showing a receipt from a pastor who left a snarky note instead of a tip. (Since she gave God 10 percent, the pastor wrote, why should she give the waitress 18?) 

Fellow employee Chelsea Welch takes a picture of the receipt (at right), uploads it to Reddit — then loses her job for violating a customer’s privacy. The firing creates an Internet firestorm, angry groups form on Facebook, and the chain's on widget tracking the twitterverse shows nonstop attacks on the chain. (The controversy came two weeks after Applebee's itself exposed the name of a pleased customer on its Facebook page, then began tagging and arguing with other posters over the issue in the middle of the night.)

Meanwhile in the U.K., as struggling music retailer HMV begins laying off 190 employees, its community manager Poppy Rose begins live tweeting how it feels as "the company you dearly love is being ruined."Continue reading...

Forget about His Master's Voice — what about His Master's Tweets? A day after we pondered what new owner Hilco might do with HMV as it sets about salvaging the British retail chain, one piece of Hilco's strategy is clear: lay off 60 staffers at corporate HQ.

The holder of the brand's official @hmvtweets Twitter account brought his or her phone to HR and live-tweeted the firing, prompting the hashtag #hmvXFactorfiring to take off among the brand's almost 65,000 Twitter followers.

Earlier tweets such as "Just overheard our marketing director (he's staying, folks) ask how he can shut down Twitter" have been taken down, but can be viewed at Gigwise. Thoughts on how to handle restructuring from a corporate, HR and employee perspective on social media? Share them below.

Update: All the tweets have been removed and a fresh series of post-meltdown tweets (including the #savehmv and #hmvxfactorfiring hashtags) asking followers to "please stick with us":Continue reading...

What will Hilco Consumer Capital do now that it has iconic music retailer HMV in its hands?

The company, which has previously acquired several other struggling brands like Polaroid, Borders and Linen 'n' Things, recently took over the bankrupt firm, paying off its £176m ($277.45 million) in debt to Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland.

The long-enduring HMV chain has 240 stores in Britain, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong, with about 4,000 employees in all. (In 2011, Hilco took in HMV's Canadian operations.) Its struggles come after Blockbuster, Tower Records and other once-dominant music and video retailers have declined or died off as digital delivery and online ordering continues surged.

Hilco is supported by media companies like Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Music and Warner Music, all of which will likely play a big part in the next step. Retail-Digital.com reports that those companies “have offered to cut the price of DVDs and CDS and are even considering offering the retailer better credit terms.” That could soon mean good deals for consumers.

While some version of HMV has been fighting the good fight for recorded music since the late 1800s, it looks like the retail chain’s ability to lift its fist to the air could soon be coming to an end.

While the brand outlasted plenty of other music retailers (Tower and Virgin come to mind), HMV is finally joining all those that have gone before it, seeking the British equivalent of bankruptcy protection and halting trading of its shares on Tuesday in the hopes that it will find a way to survive.

Not much has worked for the company since it started attempts to adapt back in 2007. Books, DVDs, and computer games are all not selling well there, either. As the BBC reported, the company failed to draw new customers as it broadened its offerings, causing disappointment among its core consumer base as CDs made room the number of CDs they could offer because of all of the new products.Continue reading...